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Trying Out a New Country Before Climate Requires They Move
In a Strange Land August, 2008 – BAY OF PLENTY, New Zealand – Of all the adjustments she’s had to make since arriving in New Zealand, Annabelle Lolo Palota says one of the biggest struggles has been getting acclimatized to the climate.
Against the Rising Tide
(Alicia Patterson Reporter, Summer 2008) WELLINGTON, New Zealand — On October 1, 1975, the British colony of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands officially split in two, with the nine small coral atolls of the Ellice Islands reclaiming their traditional name of Tuvalu. Exactly
Canadian Wetlands Produce Fuel for U.S.
Like a great silver snake, the Athabasca River glides though a spongy-wet wilderness of spindly forests, lakes and marshes 650 miles north of the U.S.-Canada border. Breathe deeply, though, and you catch a whiff of fresh, hot tar. In the river, fish are
Investigative Report: Promises and Poverty
Starbucks calls its coffee worker-friendly,but in Ethiopia, a day’s pay is a dollar Text and photos by (APF Fellow) Tom Knudson – Bee Staff Writer APF fellow Tom Knudson’s article on Starbucks was published jointly by the Sacramento Bee and the Alicia Patterson
How the Bush administration reversed decades of progress on mine safety
On the afternoon of September 23, 2001, thirty-two miners were repairing drilling machines and hoisting tunnel supports into place in the No. 5 mine of Jim Walter Resources Inc., in Brookwood, Alabama. The No. 5 is North America’s deepest coal mine, tracking the
A Union Once Again Woos Underpaid Farmworkers
April, 2007 – Lerdo, California — Ryan Zaninovich is standing in the middle of his vineyard, surrounded by the men and women who pick his grapes and tend his vines. In khaki pants, work boots and his favorite cap, the blond boss has
White Ceiling: The Alarming Result of 50 Years of Integration in Corporate America
Five decades years after President John F. Kennedy launched an ambitious effort to integrate the workplace, a white ceiling still exists. The difference now is that white women are part of the problem. In 2009, more than 40 percent of the Fortune 100
“Gone Time” Lives Anew in Alabama
MARION, Alabama – Reese Billingsley, insurance salesman and member of the county’s tiny black middle class, eased his Model-T Ford off the dirt road into the cotton field, and blew the horn. “You see, she told me not to come up to the
Revisiting The Appalachian Coalfield
What began in 1968 as a ten-day trip became fourteen years of visiting and photographing in coal mines,miners’ homes, and communities in the hills and “hollers” of West Virginia, eastern Kentucky, southwestern Virginia, and western Pennsylvania. I was attracted by a rich cultural
America’s Young Detainees
Three boys stumble out of the back of a border patrol van. Their sweatshirts, jeans, and boots are filthy, and their lips are flaky. One boy has red cheeks, chapped by the cold desert wind. The boys each clutch a small bag. They
A Citizen On Paper Has No Weight
Last week, I registered to vote. Yaser Esam Hamdi made me do it. Yes, the alleged Taliban fighter — who has been lingering in solitary confinement in a Norfolk naval brig for the past nine months — prompted me to take one more
The Blackfeet’s Lost Acres
A dozen Blackfeet Indians and one white man sit in an aspen grove up against the backbone of the world watching a horse die. This is a land of spirits and portents. Things that happen here take on a heightened significance. The slow,
The Challenges and Growth of Progressive Muslims
Astaghfirullah is an Arabic expression known to Muslims the world over, no matter what language they speak. Roughly translated, it means “I ask forgiveness from God.” Muslim parents employ it regularly to express exasperation with kids who sneak out on dates or go
Good Germs Gone Bad
To work in Abigail Salyers’ laboratory at the University of Illinois, is to play matchmaker to some unlikely couples. Standing at her laboratory bench, PhD student Kaja Malanowska lifts the cover from a petri dish to pick up a half a billion or
Sweeping out the Plains
Text and photos by Jack Coffman and George Anthan In 1890, the federal Census Bureau announced that the nation’s frontier was closed. It’s opening up again. The great wave of population, which swept homesteaders onto the Northern Great Plains with the promise of
Lives in Looting
How professional grave-robbers are destroying the past At 23, Robin is a huaquero, a professional grave-robber who has been digging up pre-Hispanic burial mounds known as huacas in his native Peru almost every night since his early teens. He and his buddies loot
When Conflict Focuses on Citizenship
War is all about taking sides – unless, of course, you can’t because you belong on both sides. That’s the sort of conflict that citizenship laws were intended to avoid. But that’s how Haider Thamir, a citizen of both Iraq and the United
Brother’s Keeper: One Family, Two Suicides
On the afternoon of Saturday, May 4, 2001, the cast of the Monadnock Regional High School production of “Ordinary People” gathered in the school auditorium in Swanzey, N.H., for its first dress rehearsal. Opening night was only four days away, and the mood
Classmates: Portraits of a Chinese Generation
Song Liming lost his virginity on a chilly day in February 1982 to an Italian temptress named Antonella in Building 10 of the Foreign Students Dormitory at Nanjing University, while Antonella’s ex-, an avuncular German named Uli, was knocking on the door outside.
Beyond Stereotypes: Globalization’s Winners and Losers
To discuss the winners and losers in globalization in developing nations such as India, most people reach for a cliché. “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer” is a widely held misnomer about globalization. Well-documented declines in poverty in poorer countries
Losing Sparta
Will All African Rhinos be Dead in Twenty Years?
Immigration: The Pain and Reward
The Scientist Who Explored the Skies
Saving the American Buffalo by Killing It
The Death of a Black Nursing Home
An Epic Experiment: Can America’s Great Plains Bison Recover?
Corporate Fishing
Treating Humans Inhumanely in America’s Justice System
The Hidden History of Same-Sex Marriage in Asia
Which Species Will Live?
South Africa’s Gay Imam and His Disciples
Centuries after the Black Death, Plague Still Kills
The WHO vs. the Tea Doctor
Latin America’s Gay Marriage Revolution
Climate adaptation: Survival of the flexible
Should we Dilute Genes to Save a Species?
As China Grows Rich, Rainforests Fall
China’s Rise Creates Clouds of U.S. Pollution
“Don’t Forget Your Court Date”
Pharming Bad Bacteria
The Man Who Turned Antibiotics Into Animal Feed
Gay Ugandans Take the Law Into Their Hands
A Rise in Fungal Diseases is Taking A Growing Toll on Wildlife
Frozen Sperm Offer a Lifeline for Coral
Chinese Demand Stokes U.S. Coal Battle
Fleeing the Fight: Displaced in Afghanistan
The Hill That Women Built
Shadow Lives USA
Is Wyoming Ruining Water Supplies to Produce Natural Gas?
The Environmental Toll of Gas Development
Energy Pollution, Past and Future, in Utah’s Indian Country
The Treasure of the Rocky Mountain Front
A Whole World Gone: The Loss of the American Chestnut Tree
Lady of Limbo Land
Importing Nuns to Save American Monasteries
The Politics of the Habit
Risking the Pope’s Wrath
The Masada Complex
End or Begin?
Israel: Revisionism Resurgent
Islam As Raison D’Etat
Impossible Dreams
Defining Islamic Terms
Adapting on the Atoll